Startup Dreams

Keny makes the final pitch to the judges after a long weekend of work on the team's new app.

This weekend a team from Code the Dream was invited to participate in Startup Weekend in Raleigh. The original idea was that we -- Jorge, Ruben, Marcel, Keny, Ramiro and I -- would just go to help out on other startup ideas. But after a little cajoling, Keny pitched an idea for an app to help immigrant students find the college that was the best fit for them. And it proved to be one of the most popular ideas pitched on the first night. So a team was formed, and a long weekend of brainstorming, coding, debugging, and presenting began.

Ramiro works with Marcel, Ruben and Jorge as they code the first version of the new app.

After the final presentations, voting began for the crowd choice award, and we could all see the tally come in on a bar chart projected in front of the room. When the voting was done, Code the Dream's startup had came in second out of the 12 final pitches, by one vote! And that's when Keny told us he'd voted for the other team. What? Well, according to Keny, "You can't vote for your own idea, right?" And so it was, that the team got a strong second place finish and a good story that Keny will not live down for quite a while.